Social Networking Sites

[Marc]

Hello all,

I would be interested in hearing what people use (if any) for social networking via web sites. PT is what they call a "User Generated Site" which is social networking but I know a few people use other sites that are not around the concept of a forum.

here are some I have heard about:

Facebook
YouTube
Gather
MySpace
Linkedin
Plaxo
Bebo (?)
Flickr
Digg
Del.icio.us
Reddit
Newsvine
Ning
FriendFeed
Plurk
Twitter

Amazing! And how the hell can all these sites compete for traffic? I know some of them deal only in video or images but there seems to be a mass of these sites out there. Is it making us more isolated and forcing groups to say on one web site as moving a group to another site would be hard.

Cheers

marc

[outspoken]

Funnily enough I am not nor will I ever be on any of them!

Something brought about by the endless spam and junk mail my partner gets as a result of her keeping in touch with her mates.
One site actually sold her details to a horoscope site that sent her continuous text messages at $3.95 each charged to her Vodafone bill!! Took about 2 months to convince Vodafone that she hadn't authorised it.

Plus, PT and 2 other sites I subscribe to (recently to follow World economy changes) are enough for me! :-)

[Marc]

Funnily enough I am not nor will I ever be on any of them!

Something brought about by the endless spam and junk mail my partner gets as a result of her keeping in touch with her mates.
One site actually sold her details to a horoscope site that sent her continuous text messages at $3.95 each charged to her Vodafone bill!! Took about 2 months to convince Vodafone that she hadn't authorised it.

Plus, PT and 2 other sites I subscribe to (recently to follow World economy changes) are enough for me! :-)

Hello Outspoken,

Yes I have heard that some of these sites when you upload your address book the site automatically sends all the emails in your address book an invitation to join the site! You have no control over it.

Cheers

marc

[CJ]

I use a few photos sites - Flickr (http://flickr.com/photos/cjphoto/), zooomr
I am also registed on a few social sites - facebook, linkedin,plaxo etc but I dont use.

I follow a lot of blogs on Google reader (not social I know) and also use Friendfeed to follow tech news.

I find not many people use social sites in NZ (due to slow internet or because we actually like to talk to people??). Go to Silicon Valley where everyone uses them (on mobiles as well - twitter, and apps on the iPhone) and their value increases.

[Marc]

Interesting CJ,

I wonder if the bandwidth is a real issue or that people within NZ are not exposed via the media to social networking sites.

For example the US elections can be followed via reading Facebook entries managed by Fox News staff.

I think we do not use them that much as the NZ media doesn't know how to utilize them ...

Cheers

marc

[sarahk]

Are we talking about real networking or link building dressed up as networking?

zoints showed promise but seems to have lost traction.
stumbleupon took an age to really take hold - it's core premise is still worthless but around the edges they have some good functionality that I like

facebook currently rules and should stay at the top of the heap for a while yet.

[Marc]

Are we talking about real networking or link building dressed up as networking?

zoints showed promise but seems to have lost traction.
stumbleupon took an age to really take hold - it's core premise is still worthless but around the edges they have some good functionality that I like

facebook currently rules and should stay at the top of the heap for a while yet.

Yeah - good point. I am generally looking at Web 2.0 stuff where any tool that connects people or helps form a community is "social networking".

I think Facebook rules currently because its mentioned the most in the media. If you watch Fox News they always always mention Facebook and most of the main presenters have their own pages.

Cheers

marc

[CJ]

Agreed. I think a lot of the information on these sites isn't relevant to NZ'ers.

I know BeBo is the most popular site in NZ and that targets the teenage market. These are the people who get home from school and have nothing better to do with their time.

Most adults are busy so unless they get something useful or meaningful out of it, they wont do it.

For example, Linkedin is a very simple concept and could be used in the NZ commercial world very easily. But people don't use it. why? Not sure. Maybe because there is no point until everyone else does (chicken and egg) or maybe because NZ is small enough that we dont need it?

That is one reason I like Google Reader (or any other RSS feed reader). I follow 200 blogs on topics of my choosing. I have viewed over 5,000 posts in the last month. Not all of them I have read (ans some of them are pictures only) but it is a great way to get information you are interested in (provided you sign up to the correct blogs)

Photo sites are good as they provide unlimited online storage of photos (good for back up) but our slow internet holds us back. I have about 5+ gig of photos backed up on Zooomr (done when living in the UK with unlimited fast internet). I am moving to Flickr but my upload speed is only 128k. Download is fast (3mb+) which is good for viewing but not participating.

I dont browse youtube but will look at items pushed to me (via blogs etc - failblog.com is a great one for light hearted amusement every morning - photos and video)

[Marc]

I did join up to http://www.ecademy.com/ about a year ago but all I found were loads and loads of people trying to sell each other stuff. It was like a market full of sales people.

To this day even after I have complained, blacklisted their mail servers I still get bloody emails from them! They seem to give them to the "regional managers" who randomly spam you with pointless meetings where you meet and everyone tries to sell you their stuff.

It is because of my bad experience with ecademy that I do not join up to groups like Linked In because I think they will be aggressive like ecademy.

You get bored but you cannot rid yourself of them.

Cheers

marc

[sarahk]

Facebook also offers the ability to add in applications.

Consider the NZPIF (as well I might) - you could create a custom app for facebook into which you enter your membership number - it verifies against the actual NZPIF site and that then allows you to access a whole stack of functionality... Maybe I should talk to them about that?

Now, as far as I know no other social networking site lets you do that.

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Just noticed that MySpace is one of the profile options in Skype - that's a coup for them! Shame that it crashes Skype for me though

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I joined ecademy years ago - and it's always fun rediscovering those sites and seeing all the out of date information on them!

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photo sites: have you found shareapic.net? it's an earn per view site for images and has real paparazzi photos on it. Quite an interesting little time waster

[muppet]

Marc said:

I did join up to http://ww. ecademy. com/ about a year ago but all I found were loads and loads of people trying to sell each other stuff. It was like a market full of sales people.

I used to get their emails as well, but since the email address I used to use to get the emails with has fallen over, no more emails.

[Marc]

I wonder what generation is really using these sites.

I am 35 and never really even looked at these sites - I have never been to Facebook or Bebo.

The only one is YouTube to look up videos on how to make the perfect espresso!

Cheers

Marc

[Marc]

Another reason why I don't use these sites is I really don't want to build an online version of myself which comprises of personal(?) video's, thoughts, pictures etc...

Though interesting enough I have a couple of blogs (both commercial in nature), I post on forums and write articles which appear of other sites...

Maybe I am just too old

Cheers

marc

[sarahk]

I wonder what generation is really using these sites.

I am 35

This old girl just used FaceBook to send a message to Marc Willers (NZ Olympic Team, BMX) asking him some questions to help my son's homework assignment - of which Marc is the subject.

Without it we'd have been left trying to phone or write and running out of time. Apart from the fact it's his birthday tomorrow (and the other thing young people do well is party) I'm hoping to get some sort of response well before the assignment is due in.

This way Marc isn't giving away his email address and he can excommunicate me at any time and no longer be subjected to my 9 year old's questions.

[tpr2]

Well for me youtube has been great.

Every year I try and learn something new and this year was the year of learning the guitar.

Type in beginners guitar lessons and there are thousands of people providing free guitar lessons, its great.

So now I can play "your beautiful" by James Blunt.... everybody yells at me though once I start trying to sing it.

House of the rising sun is another goody but again bottles get thrown once i start singing.

Facebook is a bit of a drag , I have hundreds of requests to be a vampire or do a quizz or join a group. It's nice to see pics of some of my old friends I have not seen for years and maybe send them a "how you doin" but other than that it's a bit tiresome.